Spencer’s slipperiness: at last, others are speaking out about it

Erich writes:

On your blog you praise Spencer for the apparent fact that he “rousingly rejects the notion that large numbers of Muslims would ever accept such a revised Koran” from this quote of his at the FrontPage Symposium:

Many strange things have happened in history and I would never say that Islamic reform is absolutely impossible, but Westerners are extraordinarily foolish when they harbor any hopes of it actually happening on a large scale. We need instead to focus on efforts to defend ourselves both militarily and culturally from the jihadist challenge, and to continue to call the bluffs of pseudo-reformers who intend ultimately only to deceive Western non-Muslims—many of whom are quite anxious to be deceived.

But if this is so, why does Spencer keep framing the issue, over and over and over again, as a challenge to “honest” and “sincere” Muslims to produce a viable and effective reform? He has done so yet again at least twice in Jihad Watch articles since then, example, about a story of a British convert to Islam pursuing violent jihad, Spencer editorializes:

Here again an increase of interest in and commitment to Islam apparently coincides with involvement with jihadist activity. The implications are many, and American and British Muslim groups that profess moderation ought to be the first to be examining them. But of course, instead they are still engaged in denying that any such correlation exists, despite a superabundance of evidence to the contrary.

To say that any Muslims “ought” to step up to the plate of conceding our reasonable points and then from there to reform, is grievously mistaken. They will not do it, so why continue to expect it?

The line separating “I would never say that Islamic reform is absolutely impossible” from “look, folks, it ain’t gonna happen” is exceedingly fine—but it is an important line, and it has to be crossed. To continue to maintain that slender line as Spencer does in fact crosses the line from subtle analyst to weaselly lawyer. Spencer needs to stop talking out of both sides of his hat and take a stand for crying out loud.

Another Jihad Watch reader put it superbly in the comments field of a Jihad Watch article a couple of years ago in his response to one of Spencer’s adulators who wrote gushingly of his idol:

Robert’s refusal to universalize is such a deeply integrated part of his argumentative technique and strategy. It is part of how he almost never loses an argument.

And the reader’s superb response:

Of course, if you never take an absolute stand, then you never have to defend one either. Kind of like a politician. Hard to lose an argument if all one does is make observations or cite quotations. Good strategy for getting elected, or appearing in public.

We cannot afford to err on the side of a gingerly disinclination to condemn, or of a sentimentalist hope that Islamic reform is possible, or of some fastidiously subtle tactic of rhetorics worthy of a weaselly lawyer or politician. We need to wrap our minds around the fact that Islamic reform is impossible, and proceed accordingly. The stakes are too high to do otherwise.

I will be damned if I wait until after one of our cities gets nuked, before I expect this of our influential, supposedly anti-Islam analysts. That is my Great Expectation.

LA replies:

I’m so heartened that you see what you see, and that others you quote have seen it too. I have several times said that Spencer should speak truth as he sees it, not act like a politician trying to have it all ways to all people. I had no idea that anyone else had said this about him. It makes me feel less alone, frankly, as my effort to reveal his contradictions and slipperiness and to call him to account has been a lonely one.

If Spencer doesn’t like being called slippery, he needs to face the fact that he has flat out contradicted himself, namely, (1) he says we should give up on the hope of any large scale Islamic reform and simply must defend ourselves; and then, (2) he calls on professed Muslim moderates to change their thinking, i.e., he expects and is striving for Islamic reform! He needs to admit to the contradiction, and then stop contradicting himself.

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Jonathan Silber. writes:

Regarding Mr. Spencer and his “slipperiness”: Why the concern, on his part, over the existence or whereabouts of Muslims unsympathetic to jihad? Why the concern over whether Islam might be transformable into something nonthreatening and nondestructive? Why all the hand wringing over what others may or may not do?

We should, in response to the threat of Islam to the West, concern ourselves strictly with what we need to do, to defend ourselves and our way of life.

In World War II, did Americans sit on their hands, hoping that moderate Germans or moderate Nazis might step forward to transform Nazism into something more congenial? Did we seek to humor Nazis, to win hearts and minds of Germans, supposing that not every German was a Nazi or was sympathetic to them?

Or did we bring to bear overwhelming force and destruction upon Germany and its inhabitants, until their capacity for waging war was destroyed, along with any hope for achieving their aims through war?

This search for moderate Muslims, in the hope that they will tame their murderous brethren, and so spare us the task of resisting and destroying them, is futile, and a sign of our weakness and lack of confidence.

LA replies:

Yes. And, more specifically, it is a sign of liberalism. Meaning the attitude that white Western Christian countries don’t have any legitimacy to exist and to defend their existence from unassimilable aliens. Only the aliens have the moral legitimacy to oppose their fellow aliens and to rescue us!

Of course Spencer occasionally makes strong-sounding statements about defending the West, as he did last week and I praised him for it. But then he immediately turns around and shows that he doesn’t really mean it.

Posted by Lawrence Auster at April 21, 2008 03:43 PM | Send